


not in single spies, but in battalions

by tonystarkdadmode



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, Angst and Feels, Canonical Character Death, Grieving, Hurt Tony Stark, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), Tony Feels, Tony Stark Has A Heart, Tony Stark Needs a Hug, but its gone now, just a shit ton of angst, no beta we die like men, not explicitly pepperony but basically pepperony, why did I write this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-20
Updated: 2020-06-20
Packaged: 2021-03-04 07:21:36
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,002
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24819844
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tonystarkdadmode/pseuds/tonystarkdadmode
Summary: “What's your name?”“Harley. And you're…”“The mechanic.“Tony.”Genius. Engineer. Mechanic. Fixer.Shutting down the weapons division of Stark Industries after realizing the weapons were in the wrong hands. Reversing the effects of Extremis after Pepper was injected. Building mechanical pants for Rhodey to walk again. Tony fixes things. He fixes things when everything goes wrong, when hope is lost, when fate hands him a shit hand, he fixes. It’s what he does.But when Tony is sitting on red sand, ash running through his fingers, there isn’t a single solution left in sight.
Relationships: May Parker (Spider-Man) & Tony Stark, Pepper Potts & Tony Stark, Pepper Potts/Tony Stark, Peter Parker & Tony Stark
Comments: 4
Kudos: 35





	not in single spies, but in battalions

**Author's Note:**

> hi i’m back
> 
> had this one in the works for a while and decided to finish it a 4am, sorry in advance 
> 
> title inspo by shakespeare (hamlet) 
> 
> (i might try to expand this into a full blown fix it fic if people don’t off me first)

_ “What's your name?” _ _  
_ _ “Harley. And you're…” _ _  
_ _ “The mechanic. _ _  
_ _ “Tony.” _

  
Genius. Engineer. Mechanic. Fixer. 

Shutting down the weapons division of Stark Industries after realizing the weapons were in the wrong hands. Reversing the effects of Extremis after Pepper was injected. Building mechanical pants for Rhodey to walk again. Tony fixes things. He fixes things when everything goes wrong, when hope is lost, when fate hands him a shit hand, he fixes.  _ It’s what he does.  _

But when Tony is sitting on red sand, ash running through his fingers, there isn’t a single solution left in sight. 

__

Nebula is the one who shuffles the man into the Benatar. He can barely stand, his body exhausted both physically and emotionally. She sets him down on a seat before heading to the captain's corner to try and figure out how to get the ship into the air. It takes her nearly an hour to get it going, and Tony hasn’t moved the entire time. 

It takes a day and a half for Tony to start crying. Nebula lets him cry in peace, until the crying turns to wailing, which turns to screaming. She finds him on the floor. Despite having met him two days ago, Nebula understands the pain he is going through. She kneels next to him and places her hands on his shoulders. The man is heaving, hiccuping at the sobs escaping his lips. There are no words to say, no empty reassurances Nebula could provide that would patch his world back together, so she offers none. She simply holds his arm or his shoulder to ground him as he spiraled into sleep. 

It takes them days to reach Earth. Tony hasn’t moved since the breakdown, leaving all of the navigation to Nebula. She’s never visited this planet before, and doesn’t even know where to land the ship once they enter the air space. She would ask the other passenger, but it doesn’t seem that he is cohesive anymore. Once they’re lower to the ground, a message is sent to the craft with coordinates to land at a certain location. 

The plane lands, yet Tony still doesn’t move a muscle. In some strange way, Nebula has begun to understand the silence. She knows why he suffers. He refuses to function in the same way that she refuses to stand still in the aftermath of destruction. So it is Nebula who opens the back hatch and steps foot into the grass for the first time.

Immediately she is surrounded by three people, weapons aimed at her head.

“Don’t move, we will shoot you,” a man demands. His blue eyes hold the same vacant look in them she has seen in Tony’s this past week. She looks at the others, the blonde woman and the dark-skinned man, too, are empty.

“I have not come to fight-”

“Stop talking and put your hands in front of you, palms up,” the woman’s voice, dead. These people have lost everything, Nebula is quickly realizing they have no fears left because they all came true. She does as told.

“I mean no harm,” she starts again, “I believe I have one of your people, and have come to return them.” There is an immediate shift in the humans’ demeanors. They all share a look, but it is the older man who gasps and drops his weapon, sprinting past Nebula and onto the ship.

“Oh my god, you son of a bitch,” Rhodey cracks, tears threatening to spill as he finds his best friend residing on the floor of the ship. He drops next to him, gripping his arms to try to focus the man’s vacant eyes. “Tony, look at me please-”

“Holy  _ shit. _ ”

Rhodey turns to the voice behind him. “Steve, help me get him inside, I think he is still in shock, or dehydrated, or something.” Steve observes the hollow cheeks and jutting bones of his friend, and realizes it must be more than just shock, but decides not to say anything. The two men pull Tony’s arms over each of their necks, supporting him between their bodies.

It wasn’t until they began to enter the medbay that Tony began to notice the change in surroundings. 

“He’s gone,” the man barely squeaks out, still staring straight ahead.

“Who is he talking about?” Steve asks Rhodey.

“I lost him.” Tony repeats, not quite to the duo but to the universe. “Him,” he mumbles once more, before losing consciousness. 

Steve looks at Rhodey, but neither hold the answer.

__

_ Dehydration. Malnutrition. Deep abdominal wound. Severe psychological trauma.  _

Tony is administered nutrients and fluids to aid with nurturing his body back to normal. The hole in his stomach is properly cleaned and sewn up. But nobody is sure how to approach his psychological state. 

Rhodey is there when he woke. He tries to get his friend to talk, but Tony just stares at the wall across from him. They sit this way for hours, until Tony passes out again. 

Every time he wakes, someone new is sitting with him. Rhodey, Steve, Happy, Natasha. Every time he wakes, he sits and stares until his unconscious pulls him under. 

The second or third day after Tony’s return, he finds it was Pepper’s shift as she waits in the chair next to his bed. He looks at her.

“You came back,” Pepper’s eyes watered. She strokes his arm and squeezes his hand, not expecting a verbal response. “You’re in the medbay at the Compound, everything’s okay.”

He stares.

“Rhodey and Steve are outside. Natasha, too. Even that person who flew you here has waited. Everyone has been so worried about you.” 

She waits patiently, wanting so bad to ask but refusing to push for answers. 

“I lost the kid.” Tony’s voice is unrecognizable. There are no tears, no anguish, just a shell of the man he once was. 

Pepper has no response. There are no words to offer when someone’s world has been taken from them. So she leans over and kisses the side of his head, near his temple. The softest kiss, a reminder that with pain, there must also exist comfort. 

Tony closes his eyes. “I want to go home.” 

__

Once they return to the Tower, Tony doesn’t leave the lab. At first Pepper is thankful - she recognizes this Tony. Work Tony. Caught up in some project for days. It’s familiar, she has handled this before. 

Except he doesn’t touch anything in the lab. 

He sits on the floor, or on the couch. He sits and he thinks about how everything in that room is useless. He thinks about how he was so naive before, thinks how arrogant he was in believing he actually changed things. Fixed things. 

He is not a fixer. He never was. He was a fraud, temporarily patching up issues and sending everyone on their merry way. Nothing was concrete, it couldn’t have been. If it was that easy to be taken away, did he ever truly have it in the first place? 

The tools, the materials, the technology around him were just the puppets in his show, the special effects fooling everyone into believing they were making a difference. Fooling him. 

So he sits. He stares. He reminds himself.  _ It was all for nothing.  _

__

“He’s barely eating and he hasn’t left the lab.”

“We’ll that sounds like Tony.”

“You don’t understand,” Pepper says, exasperated. “He’s not doing anything.” 

“I thought you said he was in the lab,” Happy responds. 

“He is. He just sits there. Sometimes he moves to a different spot but I haven’t seen him touch anything or work on anything at all.” 

“Has he talked to anyone?”

“No,” Pepper sighs. “He hasn’t called anyone, not even Rhodey. He hasn’t spoken to me since that night at the Compound. I can’t tell if he’s intentionally pushing people away or shutting us out.” 

“Is there a difference?” 

“Maybe, I don’t know.” 

Happy doesn’t respond. Until, “He was a good kid. Annoying as hell, but a good kid.” 

“I think he feels responsible,” Pepper says quietly. 

They sit in silence for a few moments. 

“He really was a good kid.”

“I know, Happy. I know.” 

__

The next time Pepper brings food down to the lab, Tony is sitting up on the couch, staring at one of the bots. Pepper follows her routine, trading the old tray of food for a new one, updating Tony on Bruce, and Steve, and anyone else who had called in the past day. He doesn’t listen, and she knows this, but it feels wrong to succumb to the silence he is used to. So she rambles, hoping the noise helps him even just for a moment. 

She asks him if he needs anything. He shows no acknowledgement of her presence. She reminds him to eat, and she makes her way back to the door of the lab. 

“Pep.” Immediately, she is frozen in place. 

“Hey, it’s me,” she says as she slowly makes her way back around the couch and sits next to him. He sits, and stares for a few more minutes. Then, he turns and looks at his best friend. 

“Pep,” he mutters again, eyes as hollow as they were before. 

“Tony,” she whispers, rubbing a hand across his shoulders. 

“I need you to call May Parker.” 

“Okay.”

“I need her to come to the Tower,” his voice, straining. 

Pepper looks between his eyes, seeing that the hollowness that has resided there since his return has started to recede for the pain. 

“Okay,” she whispered. 

Tony stares at her for a beat longer, before turning back to the table. Pepper continues to sit and rub circles into his back, head tucked against his shoulder. 

“Come back to me,” she whispers. 

__

May Parker arrives the next day. Pepper retrieves her from the lobby and brings her to the main area of the penthouse, where Tony is waiting for them. 

As the two women step off the elevator, Tony’s entire body becomes rigid. May’s eyes are already damp as she walks over to hug him. They had never been that close before, but it happens before either of them realize. 

“I’m so glad you’re okay,” she mutters in the embrace. Tony is stiff, floored by the pain of seeing her, of confronting what he needs to tell her. 

“May,” he croaks. The woman pulls back. 

“I know, Tony. It’s okay, I know.” The man shakes his head. “I know he was Spider-Man, and I know the internship wasn’t real, and it’s okay,” she says, eyes continuing to spill. 

“May…” Tony starts again. He looks down as May strokes the side of his arm, unsure if the gesture was meant to comfort him or her. His throat is suddenly constricted as he forces the truth out, “It was my fault.” 

May’s breath hitches. “Tony…”

“He came with me. We were together. I couldn’t stop it. I tried, I tried, but I couldn’t stop it. It was my fault-“ 

“Tony,” May interrupts. “Look at me.” He reluctantly meets her gaze. “You tried to stop it. It wasn’t your fault.” 

His eyes fall to the floor again. “I held him as he left,” he speaks, as quiet as the wind. 

“At least he was with someone he loved. At least he had that.” 

After May left, Tony can’t hold it together any more. He falls into Pepper’s arms, his tears sliding silent and fierce down his face. These are not the hysterical sobs, unable to comprehend the events passed. These are grieving weeps. Mourning. 

Mourning for the loss of his child. Mourning for the loss of the experiences he would never see his child encounter. Mourning for the loss of the life he could have lived with him. Mourning for nothing, for everything. 

And Pepper is there for it all, holding the shattered pieces of the man together with nothing but her embrace. And Pepper would stay there, until he could pick up the pieces himself. And she would stay after. 

**Author's Note:**

> yes i will go back and properly edit this 
> 
> yes i started this fic after i saw iw for the first time 
> 
> no it is not 100% canon
> 
> yes i am sorry for causing this unnecessary pain two years later 
> 
> anyways, follow me on tumblr (same username as here) and plz give comments plsoslsoplspslsoslpls
> 
> & yes, the non-use of peter’s name was purposeful


End file.
